Self absorption at its finest - Ice snobbery

A perfect reason why I do not live in a large city.
From the New York Times:

I Like My Ice Chilled Just SoPardon us, but was that Hoshizaki or Kold-Draft that you wanted with your Grey Goose?

Did you say you like your cocktail with a cube or a lozenge or a tube with a dimpled end? Do you want that iced tea served over crushed or would you prefer fragmented?

Questions like those may seem kooky or even risible to those content to cool a summer drink with chunks of ice from the sturdy waffle-bottomed tray parked next to the prehistoric peas in the freezer. But for some, the idea of consuming generic ice is enough to raise goose bumps and not the good kind.

There are those � and don�t wear yourself out looking for statistical surveys on this one � for whom water in chunky frozen form is a source not merely of interest but also obsession. You can find them, of course � alongside every other compulsive with an affinity group or microcohort � on the Web.

They post recipes for making ice with a level of internal clarity greater than that of a D-flawless diamond. They make YouTube videos of a deliberately Captain Kangaroo-style na�vet� that demonstrate the beauties of cubes formed by boiling distilled water once to release any trapped air molecules and then boiled again and frozen before being plunked in a glass.

They forego refrigerator ice altogether in favor of the commercially produced kind, ordering products like the Air AI-100S portable ice cube maker, capable of producing fresh ice in 10 minutes, up to 28 pounds of it a day. Some aficionados, like the country singer Vince Gill (who has a Scotsman), even raise the ante by installing commercial-grade ice machines in their homes. And some set out on a kind of gourmet ice hegira (Safeway to Gristedes to Fairway) whenever friends come to drink.

Almost $200 for an ice making machine. Yikes.
It's just frozen water people -- get over it...